den in an old hollow beech-stub on the west of
the wood. They had named the place out of the verse in Lays of Ancient
Rome:

From lordly Volaterrae,
Where scowls the far-famed hold
Piled by the hands of giants
For Godlike Kings of old.

They were the 'Godlike Kings', and when old Hobden piled some
comfortable brushwood between the big wooden knees of Volaterrae, they
called him 'Hands of Giants'.

Una slipped through their private gap in the fence, and sat still
awhile, scowling as scowlily and lordlily as she knew how; for
Volaterrae is an important watch-tower that juts out of Far Wood just
as Far Wood juts out of the hillside. Pook's Hill lay below her and
all the turns of the brook as it wanders out of the Willingford Woods,
between hop-gardens, to old Hobden's cottage at the Forge. The
sou'-west wind (there is always a wind by Volaterrae) blew from the
bare ridge where Cherry Clack Windmill stands.

Now wind prowling through woods sounds like exciting things going to
happen, and that is why on blowy days you stand up in Volaterrae and
shout bits of the Lays to suit its noises.

Una took Dan's catapult from its secret place, and made ready to meet
Lars Porsena's army stealing through the wind-whitened aspens by the
brook. A gust boomed up the valley, and Una chanted sorrowfully:

'Verbenna down to Ostia
Hath wasted all the plain:
Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
And the stout guards are slain.'

But the wind, not charging fair to the wood, started aside and shook a
single oak in Gleason's pasture. Here it made itself all small and
crouched among the grasses, waving the tips of them as a cat waves the
tip of her tail before she springs.

'Now welcome--welcome, Sextus,' sang Una, loading the catapult--
'Now welcome to thy home!
Why dost thou stay, and turn away?
Here lies the road to Rome.'

She fired into the face of the lull, to wake up the cowardly wind, and
heard a grunt from behind a thorn in the pasture.

'Oh, my Winkie!' she said aloud, and that was something she had picked
up from Dan. 'I b'lieve I've tickled up a Gleason cow.'

'You little painted beast!' a voice cried. 'I'll teach you to sling
your masters!'

She looked down most cautiously, and saw a young man covered with hoopy
bronze armour all glowing among the late broom. But what Una admired
beyond all was his great bronze helmet with a red horse-tail that
flicked in the win